Page:White - The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.djvu/305



remarkable for ending that sort of game. But, when we came to offer the bones of partridges to the two Chinese dogs, they devoured them with much greediness, and licked the platter clean.

No sporting dogs will flush woodcocks till inured to the scent and trained to the sport, which they then pursue with vehemence and transport; but then they will not touch their bones, but turn from them with abhorrence, even when they are hungry.

Now, that dogs should not be fond of the bones of such birds as they are not disposed to hunt is no wonder; but why they reject and do not care to eat their natural game is not so easily accounted for, since the end of hunting seems to be, that the chase pursued should be eaten. Dogs again will not devour the more rancid water-fowls, nor indeed the bones of any wild-fowls; nor will they touch the foetid bodies of birds that feed on offal and garbage: and indeed there may be somewhat of providential instinct in this circumstance of dislike; for vultures,* and kites, and ravens, and crows, etc., were intended to be messmates with dogs** over their carrion; and seem to be appointed by nature as fellow-scavengers to remove all cadaverous nuisances from the face of the earth. (* Hasselquist, in his Travels to the Levant, observes that the dogs and vultures at Grand Cairo maintain such a friendly intercourse as to bring up their young together in the same place.) (** The Chinese word for a dog to an European ear sounds like quihloh.)

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